'Not in the Style of the Code Napoleon'

Who would you guess wrote the sentence quoted below? Please, no cheating. Though brief, the sample is indelibly the author’s in terms of word choice, pithiness, allusion, humor and sentiment. The seasoned reader will get it or, after being informed of the writer’s identity, will say, “Of course.” 

“The Self thinks in clichés and euphemisms, not in the Code Napoléon.”

 

The Code civil des Français, enacted in 1804 and still in place, heavily amended, attempted to unify and make consistent French civil law, especially in matters of property and family. In other words, it was intended to be rational, in a characteristically French manner, and to apply unvaryingly to all. It drew from Roman law and influenced subsequent civil codes around the world, including America’s.

 

We’ve all known people who strive to think like a law book: reduce ambiguity at all costs and simplify life’s muddle. In extreme cases, this means turning life into a series of binary choices: good/bad, right/wrong, me/you. Never a question, always an answer. Humanity as algorithm. Here’s how our author begins the passage that culminates in the quoted sentence:

 

“An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.”

 

Next, our man quotes Boswell, whom he describes as “almost alone in his honesty.” The line is from the London Journal, the entry for June 18, 1763. Boswell has engaged a prostitute in Privy Garden, who picks his pocket: “I determined to do so no more; but if the Cyprian Fury should seize me to participate my amorous flame with a genteel Girl.” Boswell had first met Johnson only one month earlier. In contrast to Boswell’s example, our author continues:

 

“Stendhal would never have dared write such a sentence. He would have said to himself: ‘Phrases like Cyprian Fury and amorous flame are clichés; I must put down in plain words exactly what I mean.’ But he would have been wrong, for the Self thinks in clichés and euphemisms, not in the style of the Code Napoleon.”

 

In case you haven’t guessed, the writer is W.H. Auden in “Hic et Ille” (The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, 1962).